3-021 - Classroom Quality in Early Childhood: Understanding the Importance of Individual Experiences

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

The importance of quality early childhood and early elementary educational experiences to children’s learning and development is well-established. However, observational measures of classroom quality are weakly correlated to children’s learning and development (Burchinal, 2017). These measures focus on quality as a classroom-level feature, despite that fact that children have unique experiences in the classroom. This symposium focuses on understanding young children’s individual experiences of quality and activities in the classroom, how these experiences are related to learning, and how they vary across grades.
In the first paper, the predictive power of classroom-level quality and activities, and quality and activities captured at the individual-level are compared in a diverse sample of preschool classrooms. Children’s individual experiences in the classroom were more predictive of children’s language and math gains. The second paper focuses on associations between first graders’ individual instructional experiences and their gains in reading skills. Interestingly, these associations were dependent on children’s self-regulation skills, highlighting the importance of considering children’s characteristics when examining their classroom experiences. The last paper demonstrates that children’s classroom experiences are largely individualized and that they systematically vary across the preschool and early elementary grades, especially in terms of specific activities such as time spent on worksheets.
The discussion of these three papers will be led by an experienced early educational policymaker and researcher, and will focus on the importance on children’s individual classroom experiences for future research and for policy and practice.

Sub Unit

• Education, Schooling

Chair

• Kelly M Purtell, The Ohio State University

Discussant

• Sara Vecchiotti, Foundation for Child Development

Individual Presentations

• Level of Measurement and Improving Associations between Early Care and Education Quality and Practice and Child Outcomes - Presenting Author: Peg Burchinal, University of North Carolina; Non-Presenting Author: Ellen Peisner-Feinberg, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Non-Presenting Author: Mary Bratsch-Hines, UNC-Chapel Hill; Non-Presenting Author: Ximena Franco, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Using Child-Level Observation Data to Understand What Works and for Whom - Presenting Author: Carol Connor, University of California Irvine; Non-Presenting Author: Ashley Adams, University of California Irvine

• Classroom Experiences Across the Early Grades: The Importance of Individual Experiences - Presenting Author: Kelly M Purtell, The Ohio State University; Non-Presenting Author: Hui Jiang, Ohio State University; Non-Presenting Author: Laura Justice, The Ohio State University; Non-Presenting Author: Tzu-Jung Lin, Ohio State University; Non-Presenting Author: Jessica Logan, The Ohio State University